Calculating and Dancing
by Niagra Falling
Summary: What a strange pair they’ll make. 30 drabbles on Kalasin and Kaddar Ilinat


**Kallydar. 30 things from the LJ fanfic100 thing which I haven't joined but am using. I don't own any of Tamora Pierce's creations. Technically there are 100, but for now I'm just doing 30. **

**Beginnings**

She saw him for the first time when she arrived. His face was shaded by the canopy, and she saw mostly the glitter of gems and the sheen of the gold on his clothes, shoes, and hair. She decides that he is decked out like a peacock, and decides that she won't like him because he is over adorned. It sounds childish, she knows this, but she needs something childish. Childish now is her link to Tortall, to home. Lianne and Liam are here with her for the wedding. She has asked that her sister stays for a while, but Lianne needs to go to Galla to meet the prince. So because of this, she dislikes the prince. She stops gazing off into space when Lianne pokes her in the back with a sharp, manicured nail. Lianne had always been fussy about her nails. Kaddar raises his head, and she catches his eye. He smiles slightly, and then she understands: this is not an end, this is a beginning.

**Middles**

It has been a year since they have married, and she has stopped missing Tortall so much that it hurts. It is still an ache, and her throat still seizes up when she sees birds from home that Master Lindhall left, or hears music Jasson would play, or smells a flower that grows in a garden in Naxen. But it hurts less. The fights have lessened too, the pinching she and Kaddar take part in while dancing or the sharp prods with his foot in the middle of the night. She had missed things at home, but she has seen much here, and she is starting to be happy. Now she is at the middle, and doesn't know whether she wants to go back to the beginning or hurry towards the end.

**Ends**

She can see the end of the road she has traveled on, from Tortall to Carthak. The ache in her heart has lessened over time; the lump in her throat has stopped. Hearing music or tasting food doesn't trigger any fierce emotions, but when she hears of news from Tortall of the events that she should have been there for she saddens, but not as much as she feels she should have. The only thing that really hurt her heart was missing the birth of her niece, but a baron had risen up against themand it hadn't been safe to travel then. She had gone to see little Lianokami a month later, but it wasn't the same. Her fights with Kaddar have almost stopped, and if she is not yet in love with him she almost is, even if she doesn't know it and he is too blind to realize his affections for her. Kalasin can see an end to a road she has traveled, and she is at peace.

**Insides **

Kalasin is a master at disguising what she feels, for the reason that she is a princess, and now an empress. She has been able to stand there and gaze calmly at a messenger bringing bad news, giving no hint of her feelings, but inside she is fire, ice, lighting and storm, unheard voices screaming in agony, all saying the same thing, why? Questioning how she was so stupid, or angry, or bold. And worst, questioning why on the outside she may be smooth rock, but how on the inside she can always be fire, ice, lightning and storm. Kaddar loves her for her inside, but she always wonders if he loves her for her smooth rock and not her fire, ice, lightning and storm.

**Outsides**

For a few weeks but what had felt like months to him, he saw Kalasin as a smooth, rock hard creature, not breaking in her unfathomable dislike of him. He wonders how she is like inside, not how she is on this rock outside of her she shows him. He wonders if she hates him for taking her away from home and a knighthood that could have been hers, and he wishes he would see more than her outside. It wasn't until she shrieks after he pokes her with his foot for the umpteenth time and attacks him with her pillow that he sees the inside of her, and he is glad she is not all her outside, that she is fire, ice, lightning and storm as well.

**Hours **

The summer hours crawl by so slowly for her, and there is not even swimming at Pirate's Swoop to pass the time, to take her mind of the endless heat. The hours have gone slowly for her since she cannot sleep in the heat, and there is nothing to look forward too, just more hours of the endless heat. Then Kaddar presents her with a beautiful fan, actually a _shukusen _that is styled like the ones Shinkokami has, all scarlet and gold. What makes her laugh is that he had his sister Nadi give it to her, because he was too embarrassed, possibly, to give it to her himself. This also brought her closer to Nadi, Kaddar's sister, who she had wanted to be friendly with, and she thanks Kaddar for that and helping her to chase away the summer hours and he turns red and she laughs.

**Days**

It has been days since she left for Tortall to meet her niece and Kaddar despairs. He didn't know how much he had missed her and her pinches and her pokes and her prods and her laugh until they weren't his and they were gone and now in the possession of her brother and sister in law and niece and the rest of her family. He hasn't wanted anything back this much ever in his life and it annoys him. He frowns deeply as he realizes something that makes his heart a well of despair: it has been days since she left him for them and it shall be days before she leaves them to come back.

**Weeks**

Kaddar has been gone for weeks, she thinks, and it isn't _fair_. She invents silly excuses to herself for why he has been gone so long, and her current one is that he has a lover and her name is Dacia Kirsaj, or something exotic like it. This false lover has long hair and deep dark eyes and a perfect figure and of course this nonexistent person makes Kalasin feel perfectly inferior. That is what false lovers are supposed to do. She figures that it came in the job description. She knows it is stupid and idiotic, but she doesn't care. It has, after all, been weeks. Then she leaps up with a glad cry, for the door is opening. Then she sinks down with a sigh, for it wasn't him, it was only a maid, and she pouts. It has, after all, been _weeks_.

**Months**

The months that she has spent in Carthak go by faster and faster, she realizes, as this becomes her home. The first month without Tortall and her family stretched on forever, and it seemed like it would never end. The second one was slightly shorter, but not by much and it still hurt. It got better by the third month, and the fourth month seemed almost normal, being and fighting with Kaddar. And now, the months seem too short, but this time they're too short until they leave for Siraj in the summer. The months have changed since she came here, and for that she is glad.

**10. Years**

Kaddar doesn't realize why Kally has so many years on her. It wasn't age, physical years, but it was years that hang on her heart. He asked her about it, once, and he got an aristocratic sniff and a un-aristocratic shudder and then she had run from the room. He worked on her, bit by bit, until he heard her tale of a siege on Pirate's Swoop and how she, her brother, and her mother had been the reason. There were other factors, but this was his prize then. She had been seven or eight, healing people on the brink of death, and she had seen how stupid war could be. She had wanted to be a knight to help people, not to wage war, and she had realized a darker side of the kind people she had known. The siege, she had added, was also a sort of reason why she sometimes loathed Carthak when she had first came.

**11. Red**

Her blood is red. He knows this, for all blood is red. But when it ran from a gash on her arm, bright against the paleness of her skin, he wondered why he had not realized that blood was that red. She looked at him, seeing the odd look on his face.

"It's all right," she said, kissing him lightly on the cheek. Her lips were red, too. "It's only a cut, Kaddar,"

"I know that it's only a cut, Kally." He said. "But it seems worse when it's on your skin."

She looked at him quizzically.

"No, it's not." She says.

"It's the worst when that red is on a soldier. Because then you know that you've sent them to injury, and it's your fault."

**12. Orange**

Her dress for this ball is a horrid, lurid orange. She likes pale orange, with a hint of red, or dark, burnt orange, with its contrast against the paleness of her skin. She does not like this orange, and furthermore, she does not like the rough cloth, almost like a sack. For a second she wonders if this dress is made from a few of those horrible orange feed bags from the stable. Obviously it isn't, (or maybe it is) but still. It's a nice theory to entertain. The door creaks open, and Kaddar enters. She glares at him.

"This dress looks horrible." She says. He comes over to kiss her on the top of her head.

"It does," he says agreeably. "But you look so lovely." She smiles up at him and the ugliness of the dress is ignored.

**13. Yellow**

The sun is very yellow in Carthak, and very bright. Kalasin begins to notice this after a few weeks, and just as soon began to hate it. The brightness, of course. Not the yellowness. But after a year or so she starts loving the color of the sun. Like Kaddar, she muses. She loves him now, she thinks, and she hated him when she arrived. The yellow of the sun is bright and surrounding, and the sun in Tortall pales in comparison, even though it was the same yellow ball. Life here, she decides, is yellow in shade. Bright and colorful.

**14. Green**

His garden has a section that is filled with green. There are plants from Tortall there that he does his best to make live in the bright Carthaki sun. Kalasin loves the long-limbed ferns, with their tapering points, and the evergreen trees, and the small pine tree. She kissed him when he showed her these plants, in full view of all the servants and the Duke of Saskrit, the Lady of Chima River and the heir to the holding of Kistna Heights. Because of her love of green, the green corner of his garden is his favorite, simply because it is her favorite, too. Because of this, both Nadareh and Nadi call him a hopeless romantic. He strongly denies this. After all, his favorite corner of the garden isn't red or pink, it's green.

**15. Blue**

Kalasin's eyes are blue. The Conte blue, people call it, but Kaddar strongly denies this. Her blue eyes are not Conte blue, they are Kalasin blue. They change with her moods. They can be annoyed Kalasin blue, a flat sapphire color, and angry Kalasin blue, a dull navy, or really really mad Kalasin blue, midnight colored with a steely glint. Her eyes can be happy Kalasin blue, a gleaming aquamarine, or sad Kalasin blue, a pale blue color with hints of gray and lots of tears. Kaddar strongly denies that her eyes are Conte blue, for he knows better. Her eyes are Kalasin blue, and they reflect her moods.

**16. Purple**

Kalasin loves purple grapes. To her, the green ones are much drab and very tasteless. To him, the purple ones stain her lips, turning them a deep purple red. She says that it does not matter, because she has lilac lip rouge that she wore yesterday and he hadn't even noticed. He says that they're silly to argue over the color of her lips. She asks Zaimid and he tells her that her lips would look best in green. At this point, both of them back away slowly, worried for Zaimid's mental health, the health of him and her, and the health of Lady Saraiyu Balitang, Zaimid's wife. Zaimid laughs crazily as they do this.

**17. Brown**

Kaddar's eyes are very brown. She had noticed this as soon as she met him, really met him, not some random formal introduction (there were many) with nobles and servants and eighteen course meals where they were allowed to talk for about twelve seconds and were only allowed to say 'hello' and 'nice to meet you' and 'Carthak is very charming' or 'I'm glad that you are having a pleasant time here'. . She noticed his eyes when they met in the library, the one that quickly became her favorite, with its large selection of books and amounts of nooks and crannies for her to crawl into and read. They had literally run into each other, and had a discussion that Zaimid would call a full fletched fight. But then she had broken off, seeing his eyes and how brown they were.

**18. Black**

Kalasin has long, silky black hair. One of her pleasures is convincing Kaddar to brush it out. Sometimes, she muses, that convincing him and watching his face turn either fuchsia or magenta (it varies) is almost more pleasurable than having him brush her hair itself. Almost. What he likes about brushing her hair, that he would admit to no one but Zaimid and then only when he was very, very, drunk was the way she smiled when he did this, yanking a comb through hair that got _extremely_ knotted. He also enjoyed the way she hummed when he brushed her long dark hair, the sounds he likened to a cat's purr. And her hair itself, long and dark and silky black, spilling into his lap and tickling his nose and causing him to sneeze. He liked that best, although he wouldn't dare tell his wife. Who knew what she would make of it?

**19. White**

Her wedding dress is long, glorious, and silk, but it is oh so very white. True, there was colored trim, but it was blue and only to match her currently indigo eyes. Her eyes changed with her moods. This white dress was also long, cumbersome, and hot. It was definitely not how she had imagined her wedding dress to be. She remembered her mother's wedding dress that she had tried on the night before she had left for here. It was lovely and light, floating silkily around her body and it had fit. Maybe it was the embroidery her mother had had done in the K'miri style. Maybe it was the red, twisting up the hem. Whatever it was in that dress, it had felt like magic to her. There was three weeks until the wedding. Her mother had whispered to her that if she wanted to she could wear it. Thayet had ordered it slipped into a corner of a trunk, and Kalasin had discovered this only last night. Kaddar would see her in a dress she loved, even if she didn't love him yet. She stood up.

"The dress goes." She ordered. "I'm wearing my mother's." And she knows that this is right.

**20. Colorless**

For the first time in her life, Kalasin is glad that something is colorless. In this case, it's itch potion. It's odorless also, and she is also happy about this. She needs revenge on Kaddar for him winning the debate about agriculture in the west, and even though her side was obviously so much better, he won and now she wants revenge. It is childish, certainly, but who cares. Besides, it was Nadi who gave her the idea. _So there_, she says to the inner voice inside of her. She is very glad for this colorless itch potion and her ability to slip into the kitchens at midnight when there is no one there and pour it into his drink.

**21. Friends**

He was friends with her first, he thinks, not lovers. Friends that poke each other and hurt them and prank them. They weren't really friends for a year or so, when Kalasin stopped clinging to anything that she had left of Tortall. He liked her a lot, but they had kissed only when required to show their devotion to each other? Undying love? Prettiness? (The last was Nadareh's opinion), But they became friends, stopped doing things simply because they could and because they wanted to irk each other. Maybe then he had fallen almost in love (had he fallen in like?) but he can't be sure, because the only person he has ever loved in that way is Kalasin. But they were friends first, and they still are friends, and he tries to remember this when she is gloating because she won the debate on agriculture, and he had won last time, even though she was right this time and last.

**22. Enemies**

Kaddar's enemy was the place dog. His name was Avitus, which meant emperor, roughly translated, and he was the epitome of cuteness with floppy ears, big gold eyes, perfect silky golden hair, and the most _adorable _little tail, as Kalasin put it. The dog was out to get him. Kaddar knew it. His favorite thing was tripping him when he couldn't see because of all the random documents that the actual emperor was holding. The only good thing that came out of that was that Kalasin would kiss him, and this could be the start of a kissing session. But still. Kaddar didn't care how foolish it sounded, Avitus was his enemy. Even if he made Kalasin kiss him more often than not.

**23. Lovers**

They are in love, true love now. He admires the way that she holds her head, she absentmindedly smoothes his hair. He thinks she's beautiful, she thinks him handsome even when she says that he looks like a strangled zebra when they are ahem, forced, to attend a ball. They love each other, although Kalasin can't stand anything wet on the bed because it makes the covers smell disgusting, and Kaddar hates the fumes of her nail paint. He loves all of her quirks, and she loves all of his oddities. He loves her moods and she loves his sarcasm. They are lovers.

**24. Family**

Kaddar's immediate family is all female with one exception. His mother Fazia, his sisters Nadi and Nadareh, his nieces and his sole nephew. Her family is large, Roald, Shinkokami, their children Lianokami, Solem, Isamu, Aeden, and Sakura, Lianne and her Gallan prince Ollad and their two children, Liam and Queen Dovasary of the Copper Isles and their three children, and Jasson and his wife and their single child (although another is coming) Vania, and then all of her adopted uncles and aunts. Then there are their children, running and jumping and holding secret meeting behind statues in the wings of the palace, stealing food from Varice (although she usually gives it to them willingly) and being a general pain by blowing up important documents. And then they somehow get away with it.

**25. Strangers**

When they first met, they were strangers. Strangers who, of course, were going to have to get married, have children, and rule a country. She hates him at first, because of what he's taken away from her. A knighthood, her family, Tortall- there was so much. Kaddar doesn't hate her or like her. In his mind, she's going to be his wife, yes, he needs to cement the alliance with Tortall, she's smart, pretty- fine. He's happy enough with that. She hates him even though she doesn't know him, he guesses she'll like him well enough, and he her.

What a strange pair they'll make.

**26. Teammates**

They _have_ to get revenge against Zaimid and Nadi. Kaddar lovely sister and cousin have gone around telling the _entire court_, including the very conservative, fussy old councilors,that they saw Kaddar and Kalasin in the stables, doing something that is generally reserved for bedrooms. Kalasin looks at Kaddar and frowns.

"I don't have sexual tastes that are _that_ perverted. And hay is itchy." She pauses. "I don't even _like _you, let alone love you." He scowls.

"Really, Kalasin? Might I change your mind about that?"

He holds her, dips her back so her hair almost touches the floor, and kisses her. Her eyes wide with shock, she kisses back, her hands tangling in his hair. Zaimid, who is just a few feet away, stares. Wait until everyone heard this!

**27. Parents**

Being a parent is odd, she thinks. You have to adjust to a whole new set of things to do, waking up at odd hours of the night to feed them, kissing and loving and being depended on. The last one is the hardest, she thinks. They look up to you for advice, have you help them, feed them, and clothe them. She feels like she is going through this alone. But then Kaddar comes up to her and places his hands on her shoulders as she nurses one of the twins, Sian. He kisses her gently on the head and then on the cheek and she thinks it may not be so hard after all.

**28. Children**

They have many children. Arianwen and Sian, then Khayet, then Adin, and lastly Keladry, named for the Lady Knight whom she had become friends with when Lady Knight Keladry had come to Carthak for a few months to help with her warriors, Queen's Sword. Part of the reason the Lady Knight had come was that she was pregnant; King Jonathan had ordered her off typical knight's work. Her children surprise and delight her, even if Adin has war magic and enjoys blowing up extremely important state documents. She sees both Kaddar and herself in them; they are a part of both of them. She loves them with all that she has.

**29. Birth**

She hadn't known how much it would hurt. Her mother had told her some things, but she still hadn't known how much it would hurt. She is screaming extremely loudly, and Nadi is trying to reassure her. Kaddar is hovering by, but staying back. She may or may not have broken one of his fingers. It was healed extremely quickly, but she does feel very guilty. Of course, this is when she isn't in extreme amounts of pain. Nadi tells her that it is almost over, that soon she will have a child very soon. She is cursing at Kaddar, cursing him and men in general. He looks slightly shocked at what is coming out of her mouth, which can be nicely translated to the way soldiers talk. She screams again, and it hurts more, and then Nadi is holding up a small purplish person. But it is supposed to stop after the child is born, the pain is supposed to stop, and it's not. Nadi looks very shocked. "Kally, you've got twins!" That explains the pain. Kaddar looks even more shocked, if that was possible. Then it is over, and two children are placed in her arms.

"Two girls," says Nadi. "I know you only had one name."

"Sian," She said.

"See-yan?" says Nadi.

"It's spelled S-i-a-n." she said.

"Oh," Nadi says.

"And Arianwen."

"Lovely," says Nadi.

"Good," says Kaddar. And it is over.

**30. Death**

It is the anniversary of his father's death. He has stopped counting, because it makes him sad, but it has been around ten years. The same thing is done every year, the same service, his mother with a long veil to her knees, Nadareh with little Gazanoi somber and dressed in yards and yards of black, Nadi with her husband. Kalasin walks quietly up to him, and slips her hand in his. "This is a sad day, Kaddar. So do something nice to remember about this day. And do this something yourself. Give a beggar a coin, a child a sweet." "I shall," he promises her, and squeezes her hand.

**NOTE:**

**Arianwen: ari-most, anne- grace wen-refined total meaning- most refined grace, or most refined graceful one.**

**Sian: god is gracious (pronounced Shan, but I like it being pronounced See-an better, and Welsh pronunciation is weird)**

**Adin: Fiery (from the modern name Aden)**

**Khayet: Fortified place. (I got the root from Thayet, but the meaning from the name Chet, which is short for Chester.)**

**Keladry: Noble strength in war (From Kelle- War, Audry- Noble strength)**

**Also, I now know it's canon that Kally and Kaddar have a son first, but all but the last two prompts were written before I knew this, and I'm too lazy to fix it. **


End file.
